“Patrick.”
“Right. Say he had married you, been partners at work, partners at home. Would you still have wanted this?” He gestured to the room around them, and what lay beyond.
“You mean did I want the more traditional home? Babies, a puppy, nine-to-five day job, that kind of thing?”
“Yes. I know the resort was never going to be nine-to-five, but you know what I mean.”
“I do, and I don’t know. Patrick had other properties, but the resort was his baby. We lived on premises, very nice premises, but…that was home. A very familiar one to me, of course, though certainly more posh than the one I grew up in.”
“Were you happy? Doing that, I mean?”
“I was certainly good at it, given my background. But…I don’t know that I yearned for the white picket fence world, really. We never really got that far and my life didn’t really ever seem suited quite for that. But I did know that if I could do whatever I wanted, I wanted to take what I knew about running hotels and run my own smaller place. Intimate, personal-mine. I think it was maybe my way of combining what I knew with what I wanted to have.”
“And now you have.”
“Trying to, anyway.”
“Is it what you wanted?”
She didn’t answer right away. “Yes, and no. Yes, Pennydash Inn is exactly what I wanted, and I love the place. I had pictured being in the West, because my vision didn’t extend beyond that, but being here feels very right to me. Possibly because of how things ended out west, starting over truly fresh was not only practical financially here, but emotionally a good move, too.”
“And the no part?”
“I’m finding there are things I’m not as personally good at, I guess, as I thought I might be. But I suppose that’s to be expected. At least I tell myself that.”
“Like?”
“Well, I do like running my own ship, and I like being out from under any kind of corporate presence, both business-wise and personally. So, small, intimate, mine, is definitely the right thing for me. And I’m good with people, though I know I haven’t had the chance to prove that so much yet, but I know that’s going to be a good fit with me. That’s not something I doubted.”
“Folks in town like you; you have earned respect here. At least from what I’m hearing as I’m putting together the event.”
She smiled more brightly. “Really? That’s nice to hear. I’ve felt very welcomed here, but it’s always nice to know I’m not just imagining that part.”
“Definitely not. So…what’s the no part, then?”
“Maybe I’m not as, I don’t know…proprietary isn’t the right word, because I feel that and am that in all senses of the word. Maybe more maternal? That doesn’t seem like the right term, either, but…I think it’s more like…when you talk about Vanetta, she sounds nurturing. My ‘aunt’-Frieda-is the same. Did Vanetta have kids of her own?”
Brett shook his head. “Married a couple of times, but no. Her boarders are her babies, so she is fond of saying.”
“See, I guess I thought it would be that way for me. But despite feeling strongly about this being my place and putting my stamp on it, the business part is really just business to me. I love having guests, making them happy, getting to know them…but I don’t know that it goes beyond that. Not sure what that says about me, but…”
“Did you and Patrick discuss having a family? Do you feel that you missed out on that?”
“We did in a general sense. It was important to him to have someone to carry on the family name, but I never got the impression that he was all that interested in personally being a father.”
“And you?”
“I didn’t know what kind of parent I would make. Frankly, the idea terrified me for most of my twenties. I’m sure any shrink would tell me it’s because of my upbringing and they’d very probably be right. We were both pretty career focused, so it was an easy discussion to put off.”
“And now? Any regrets?”
She started to say something, then stopped. “What about you? You’re still in that stage where families get started.”
“You’re forty, not eighty. Families can start at any time.”
Her look instantly shuttered, though she held his gaze. “Is that a goal of yours? I mean, it’s the natural thing, so not surprising, just-”
“Kirby, I have the same fears as you do, for probably even more reasons than you do. And I definitely don’t want to know what any shrink would tell me about the long-lasting effects of my childhood. I think it was a triumph just to get myself raised. I don’t know that I was ever anxious about raising anyone else. Don’t let that spook you, okay?”
“I wasn’t spooked-okay,” she added, when he gave her a look that said he clearly knew otherwise. “Maybe a little, but it’s a knee-jerk reaction. You see, I was worried about it, but not anymore. I-I can’t have kids.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “Not by choice. It’s a long story, but I found out about eight years ago that I have a few genetic issues that make carrying a baby pretty much impossible.”
“Did Patrick know about it?”
She nodded. “He was with me when I found out. We had-well, we had a little pregnancy scare once. I’d missed a few months, but the home tests were negative, so I made an appointment to find out what was going on. Turns out my plumbing isn’t exactly normal. Anyway, I was fine, but the end result was finding out that I probably won’t ever get pregnant.”
“How did he take the news?”
“Well, or so I thought. I mean, like I said, he had made a big deal out of carrying on the family name. He mentioned adopting a few times, but we quickly got absorbed back into our work lives and it never really came up again.”
He ducked down to keep her gaze when she would have glanced away. “But?”
“But nothing; there’s nothing more to tell. I know it makes me sound like less than a woman, maybe, to say that I’m okay with that future. I never ruled out adoption, but then things turned out like they did, I moved here… I’m forty now, and…well, I made peace with it.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else.” She finally sighed when he kept staring. “Okay, okay, so the personal assistant he was with when I walked in on them…they’re married. She’s already had their first child by now, at least I assume so since she was pregnant when I left Colorado.”
“Ah. Fresh start a few thousand miles away. Good choice.”
“I thought so.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Things tend to work out the way they do for a reason. I don’t know that I’d have ever stepped out from his shadow to build my own life. Now we both apparently have what we wanted. It’s not a bad thing, Brett.”
And it was clear that she meant it.
“I just didn’t-”
“Want the pity party. I know. That’s not you. And, for what it’s worth, I’m kind of glad it worked out like it did, too.” He snugged her closer against his body. “Purely selfishly speaking.”
She giggled, which made him smile in return. He framed her face with his hands and kissed her. “I guess we’re both a couple of misfits, finding our own place,” he said.
“Something like that, I guess.”
“I like this place, Kirby. Your space. You. This. All of it. I couldn’t have said what it was that was going to make me feel content, or at peace. Or excited about life. About what I was going to do next. I should have never stayed in that world as long as I did, but I didn’t know where to go. I just knew where I wasn’t going. And that was into
